"When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been ill for a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be well?'"
John 5:6
I remember my dad had a friend who (as Dad described it) "enjoyed" ill health. When I was finally old enough to realize the inconsistency of that I asked my dad what he meant by that paradoxical phrase. "Oh, he enjoys ill health because it gives him something to talk about." Ah, yes, I get it. Some of us, frankly, resist getting well, as Jesus knows already in today's Gospel. We may be so uncomfortable with change that we stay in our own little sicknesses because the absence of them would take away our unique us-ness. Where would we be without our internal stuff? Who would we be? What would we talk about? Jesus doesn't inflict healing on someone who doesn't really want to be healed. That's why he sometimes asks the obvious question. He asks us today, too. Do you want to stay crabby with your coworkers? Do you want to perpetuate the gossip in the teacher's lounge? Do you want to walk by the guy with the sign without as much as a prayer for his needs? We need to be onboard with Jesus' healing within us. Do we want to be well? Love, heidi
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